ALT Linux

ALT Linux 4.1
Company / developer ALT Linux LLC[1] and ALT Linux Team[2]
OS family GNU/Linux
Working state Current
Source model Free and open source software
Initial release March 25, 2001 (2001-03-25)[3][4]
Latest stable release 4.1 branch /
  • Desktop 4.1.0: 08 October 2008; 90 days ago[5];
  • Server 4.0.1: 05 June 2007; 581 days ago[6];
  • OfficeServer 4.0.0: 19 May 2008; 232 days ago[7][8].
Latest unstable release Sisyphus / released daily[9]
Available language(s) Multilingual (but installation process only in English, Russian, Ukrainian[10])
Update method APT (apt-rpm)
Package manager RPM
Supported platforms i586, AMD64
Kernel type Monolithic (Linux)
Default user interface bash; KDE (in Desktop), Xfce (in Desktop Lite)
Website http://en.altlinux.org/

ALT Linux is a set of Linux distributions based upon its development project, ALT Linux Sisyphus. There are single-disk desktop versions (Junior and Compact) and "huge" universal product suiting both server, desktop and development uses (Master).

Contents

[edit] History

ALT Linux Team arose from IPLabs Linux Team, a Moscow firm subdivision, in 2001. The latter cooperated with Mandrake Linux and SUSE teams to improve localization (specifically Cyrillic) but at some point enough differences in its "Linux-Mandrake Russian Edition" became in fact distribution-specific and thus the decision was made to create ALT Linux project.

Unstable branch, Sisyphus, is a repository tailored for being a convenient base for production subsets (practiced since ca. 2002 by 3rd party vendors like ApplianceWare).

The strong points for the distribution are:

ALT Linux Sisyphus repository won a prestigious CNews award in 2007[11].

[edit] Distributions

 Please help improve this section by expanding it with:
descriptions of distribution variants. Further information might be found on the talk page. (June 2008)

ALT Linux releases a wide range of distributions, both for beginner and advanced users.

Historically, the first distribution released by ALT project was all-purpose distribution Linux-Mandrake Spring 2001. It was a heavily modified Mandrake distribution for localization, security hardening, technology innovations, etc. Since then, all-purpose distribution product line was renamed to ALT Linux Master.

[edit] Lite

A small one CD distribution for older / low-memory computers, with Xfce as default desktop. Available in normal and Live CD versions.[12]

[edit] Compact

Compact is a series of ALT Linux distributions tailored for beginner users. It's mostly supposed to be used on workstations, home computers and notebooks. It includes additional traits for easy configuration, lots of office and multimedia applications, some games. Compact is also popular choice for OEMing, i.e. creating a specific edition for various hardware vendors to bundle with their hardware.

Last version ALT Linux Compact 3.0 was released in December, 2005 in 3 flavors (CD, DVD and Live CD).

[edit] Junior

[edit] Desktop

[edit] Master

[edit] Server

ALT Linux Server is a hardened server one-disc distribution. It is certified[13] by Federal department of technical and expert control of Russia in the following categories:

  • by the level of monitoring for non-declared features — level 4[14]
  • class of protection from unsanctioned information access — class 5[15]

[edit] Terminal

ALT Linux Terminal is a terminal server distribution[16] based on ALT Linux Desktop and ALTSP5 — a friendly/merging fork of LTSP which is usable on older hardware acting as thin/diskless clients (while stock LTSP5 usually requires 64+Mb RAM). It was also adapted for Russian School Education National Project[17] free software package.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://en.altlinux.org/ALT_Linux_Ltd
  2. ^ http://en.altlinux.org/ALT_Linux_Team
  3. ^ Releases/History - ALT Linux Wiki(Russian)
  4. ^ [mdk-re] I: Linux-Mandrake RE Spring 2001(Russian)
  5. ^ CD images for the current 4.1 Desktop release: ftp, http.
  6. ^ Installation CD images for the current 4.0 Server release: ftp, http.
  7. ^ Installation CD images for the current 4.0 OfficeServer release: ftp, http.
  8. ^ OfficeServer 4.0.0 announcement(Russian)
  9. ^ sisyphus.ru(Russian) tracks the daily development.
  10. ^ Desktop 4.0.3 installation CD images in 3 languages.
  11. ^ CNews award 2007 results
  12. ^ ALT Linux Lite 4.0 description
  13. ^ A certificate of conformance #1501, November 8, 2007
  14. ^ Classification by level of monitoring for non-declared features
  15. ^ Classes of protection from unsanctioned information access
  16. ^ Last release is 4.0.0.
  17. ^ School software list

[edit] External links

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Linux distributions